What do we actually do in MENTOR?

Here's 11 Things You Can Do Today To change Your Life or Business Without Spending a Single Penny From My Business Mentor Program!

I thought it would be interesting for you if I shared today some things we do on MENTOR. Clearly not everything is here as MENTOR is bespoke for each client.

Ready? So here is an initial list I do with my MENTOR guys and of course you can do or should do yourself. OK ready to go?

YOUR LIFE?

Remember everything is life and life has a time on it. The real problem is you don’t know when the time stops (it does and will stop).  All you know is the clock is running and at some point it will stop dead.

So think about your life.

• Are you happy?
• Is it a struggle?
• Do you feel like you hate everything?
• Is it simply a life you no longer want?

The bottom-line is this. MENTOR is built around life not life built around MENTOR. If life isn’t happy you can do as many MENTORS as you want but ultimately happiness isn’t about money or playing the high-flyer, it’s a much deeper and more human thing that I like to address right at the start of MENTOR.

So you can ask yourself these few things right now

• Am I happy with how my life or business is right now?
• What changes can I make that'll change things?
• What is causing the problems with my life and business?
• Can I fix those problems and create a happier life and business?
• Can I build a business that will support my new-life choices?

YOU MUST STOP

Why stop?

Well if everything was working just fine you wouldn’t be reading this so stop right now - Stop everything you're doing and ask why it isn’t or hasn’t worked for you right now. The reason we do this is to look at the lessons to be learnt. Your life is filled with patterns that you will be repeating. There are some great discoveries come out of this process and it’s pretty amazing that by simply stopping you can see what is happening.

Years ago I drove all the way to Wales in my car with a noise coming from the rear left wheel. It got worse and worse and worse until smoke began to come from the wheel. I then of course drove the fifty miles back home. I carried on until one day the wheel had locked and refused to moved. I called the rescue service, they arrived and told me I need a whole set of new everything for that wheel.

The final bill on this old Mercedes came to £2,100. It all started with a problem that should have cost almost nothing to fix. I finally got rid of the car but it cost me heavily.

If you are having problems with your life or business you need to…

• Stop
• Get out look at what the problem is

Only when the problems are fixed … you get back in and start to move again. Business and marketing is no different. Don’t do what most new clients do and that’s keep throwing cash at everything just hoping it will work because it should work. The only way to solve the problem is to be objective and proactive and sometimes that simply means – STOP!

YOUR LOCATION

Think about where you are right now with your business and your life.

• Are you where you want to be or should be?
• Do you actually ever think that through in your business?

If you jumped in the car this morning and told your wife or husband you are driving somewhere. He or she asked where are you driving? And you replied somewhere that is better than here. Yet if you have no destination to reach or planned how the hell will you get anywhere? You can drive and drive yet if you have no idea where you are driving to you won’t get anywhere. Make sense right?

You think your business is any different? You need to know where you are aiming to get to otherwise you’ll drive around in circles. (I know lots of car analogies – vroom vroom).

• Look at where you are right now.
• Find out why you are there because it could be a repeated habit that needs addressing and fixing before you move forward.
• Look over your history, look at your tools and skillsets and then take corrective action.

YOUR DESTINATION

Where are you going and how will you get there? You need a destination to aim for. Be realistic. I once had a client say to me they wanted to turnover £1 BILLION in two years selling key fobs that were to retail at just £2. Each. Do you know how many key fobs you actually have to sell I asked her? She replied NO but she felt she could do it. Guess what happened?

So when we plan our destination we don’t simply talk about ‘yes I am going to get rich and do really well’, we plan each specific objective.  What is it for you personally and write it out in absolute tiny detail. Plan your life and the changes you need to make in your life to make your destination a reality. Most never take into account the life changes yet it’s the life changes that will make the changes. If there's no winter there can be no summer - change has to take place.

For example some will say they simply don’t have time to plan yet once we do time management and planning suddenly a lot of wasted time reveals itself. One client was driving his car back and forth for over 15-hours every week with his kids. That’s 15-hours that were wasted because his kids asked for a lift rather than walk or get a bus. Now they get a bus, now he has stolen back his time to build his success and make changes.

So ...

• Know where you need to go
• Know how you are going to get there
• Plan your final outcome
• Write and detail out everything including exactly how much income is realistic and needed to help you create a new life.

YOUR STRATEGY

To drive anywhere takes a strategy. Will you drive direct up a never-ending traffic packed 500-mile long road or take the more scenic routes through the countryside? Once you know you must create a strategy to make it happen. If there are no strategies in place (yes more than one) nothing will happen I can promise you that!

When we build strategy we talk about things like seeding, positioning, branding, framing and many other strategic importance that most miss but make a huge difference to business and life.

• Do you know how to create strategy?
• Can you find out how to build new skills?
• You must plan your strategy in detail
• What is needed to make it happen for you?
• Can you get what you need from the resources you have?
• Have you mapped out the strategies in a diary and on wallboards?

YOUR SKILL-SET

You cannot drive a car unless you pass a driving test. To pass the test you must take lessons. Right? The skills that are need for above are bespoke for you – no one else. This means you need to create a skill-set that is carefully chosen to suit you, your personality and your overall plan for your life and business.

The good news is - It’s easier than you might be thinking you just need to get started.

• This could mean reading a lot to start with doing select and scan fast-track-system
• This could mean learning new skills – like mastering Microsoft word or excel or a computer if you don’t use one
• This could mean hiring in staff to do the jobs you really don’t want to do yourself

Once you know what you need go get them and practice until the skin falls off your fingers. You cannot become an F1 driving ace unless you drive each and everyday around that damned killer track! Find out the skills

• Find out how to learn them
• Steal back time to learn them
• Practice the skills until your are a master
• Anything you need to buy to do this has NO-COST – it’s always an investment for you.

YOUR TOOLS FOR CHANGE

No questions, if you need them to move forward you must go collect exactly what you need to get the job done. I personally paid £270 for one collector’s book on marketing. £190 for another and I have at least 3-5 books arriving into my home every week. I buy a book to read one chapter and even one paragraph. Once I invested $5,000 for a bit of information that transformed one aspect of my business. The investment was worth every last penny.

If you don’t order the tools you need you’re in the wrong mindset. If you are in the wrong mindset nothing will happen for you and you should simply get get another job until you are ready?

• Need a new computer, order it now (you can get one cheap on eBay and even the returns and refurbished page on Apple's own website)
• Need software – order and download (stop looking for FREE software - free is what it is - valueless)
• Need books, order them on eBay for low price (I have one book I pad £7 for I swear returned to me hundreds of thousands of pounds but - you have to read and act on what you read)
• Need a killer pen, go buy one ( I use a pen that cost me £60 but you can get pens for pennies)
• Papers and anything else – you need to get it otherwise you won’t move forward

GET STARTED - WILL YOU?

Open the doors, put in the keys, sit on the drivers seat and for Gods sake start driving. It’s amazing how many businesses I see that can spend weeks, months and even years planning and you know what – they still don’t get started. It’s really simple – get started and even if it isn’t quite right or goes a little wrong just get started.

Once you know the above making a start is easier but still hard all the same.

Do you find it hard to get started – why?

Find out the answer. We use a special tool I have developed to find out exactly why that happens but you might be able to find your won way of asking why? Is it fear? Is it something else? If you always struggle to get off the starting block you simply need to get a start.

WRITE

For those that I MENTOR as writers (as I MENTOR many businesses and consultants) I sat and worked out how many words I write a year and the number was pretty staggering yet I also felt the number I arrived it was under-estimated. I write around one million words a year.

Years ago there was a snooker player whose name is Steve Davis. He was asked how often he would go to the table and practice as he was winning championship after championship. His reply astonished me … 12 hours a day, 7-days a week.

Then in later years David Beckham the soccer player was asked a similar question. His reply was 8-10 hours a day just kicking a ball (I have no idea what you do with a ball for 20 seconds, I thought you kicked it once and that's it).

Recently I fell in love with artist Lucien Freud’s work. His paintings are a work of genius to my eyes. I watched an interview with him and although he never said how much time he spends painting (and gambling and womanising)  his assistant revealed Lucien painted 7-days a week from the moment he climbed out of bed until he had done enough each day.

The lesson is clear – if you want to be good you need to put in the time. To be a good writer you must write daily and if not daily as often as possible. I can always see the massive difference between my MENTOR students that write a lot and those that hardly write at all. So you can ask yourself.

• How often do I write?
• How can I get more time to write?
• Do I realise to get good I have to practice?
• Can I make a new habit to practice daily?
• How many words can I write daily?
• How do I find the time?
• Can I steal back time?

REALISM Vs. DREAMISM

Being realistic isn’t easy in a world that makes claims of nothing being impossible. Actually there is nothing wrong with admitting that some things are impossible. For example it’s just not possible for me to ever live on Mars. It’s just not possible for me to be 25 years old again. It really isn’t possible for me to do things that I just know I cannot do. So some things aren’t possible and this is what we talk about in MENTOR and that is being realistic. You must ask yourself this same thing!

Over the years I have mentored students that have read the odd book, seen a speaker here and there and have come to believe that they can do great things with little effort. There’s a guy I see around online a lot. He like a lot of his partners sell from stage. This guy in particular sells how to become an expert speaker. So in the audience people will sign up for this at £5,000. They go to the training, get the training and then they are awarded a sheet of paper that tells them they are now a speaker. The problem with that is if you have no business model, no experience, nothing to teach others, and a lot of other critical human elements missing you will never in a million years become a speaker that creates huge sales of millions of pounds.

What the expert on stage never tells you is that he has spent a lot of money and a lot of cash training to become the expert he has become. In lots of cases these experts have spent many many years training to be who and what they are yet they promise others they can be the same in a weekend. In others words – it’s just not realistic.

So in MENTOR we get real ands realistic. We bespoke and create the MENTOR for you and no one else. In other words what could be possible for you? One MENTOR I worked with came to the conclusion that if he did just £18,000 the first year he would be happy as this gave him the option to change his job because he had replaced his wage whilst at the same time given himself a raise.

So ask yourself this…

• Are your goals realistic?
• Are they dream based and impossible for you (at this time)
• How real are you aims for you?
• How real are the possibility of your outcomes?
• How real is it that you can actually do this?
• If they are not realistic how can you create a roadmap to the bigger goal so you can make the unrealistic eventually realistic?

Even if you never sign for MENTOR in a million years has this page helped you today? This is just a tiny part of what I do each week per 90-minute session with my guys. The changes I have seen over the past 9 years MENTORING have been huge.

So there you have it at least 11 things you can do today without spending a penny and all guaranteed to improve your life or business. It's just up to you to make it happen.

If you enjoyed this article and tips from my business mentor program please feel free to leave a comment, I'd be grateful.

You can join MENTOR here and I promise you this it’ll be the very best investment you ever make into your life.

Your MENTOR and man of beard wonderment.

Alan Forrest Smith